Friday, 29 September 2013, 11 clergymen of the Archdiocese of Bucharest were licensed father confessors. The religious service was celebrated by His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the chapel of the Patriarchal Residence dedicated to Saint Martyr George.
His Beatitude delivered a speech in which he spoke about the importance of the service as father confessor: “This spiritual art to heal the soul from the wounds caused by sin, to make man grow spiritually, to feed him with the food of the Holy Scriptures, with the writings of the saints, with the holy services and with the Holy Scriptures, and especially to remember in our prayers those whom we have as spiritual sons is a lifetime work. This is why what was given today is a beginning of a work, a call to harvest, as well as to plant the virtues and cultivate them in the souls of the faithful. Confession is badly needed in our time. Paradoxically, the more individualistic and selfish people are the more lonely they are if they live in overcrowded cities. This drama of loneliness as a result of individualism in the great crowds was called lonely crowd by a French existentialist philosopher, so that people are very close one to another, they step on one another’s feet, but yet, they are lonely. Who is the lonely man? It is the man separated from God. A man with no faith and no prayer living in a crowded city is more lonely than a man living in a desert because the latter one changes his physical loneliness into communion with God and with His saints, but the one who does not keep in touch with God through prayer and his fellow beings around through the good deeds of the merciful love is lonely. In a world in which secularisation means alienation from God too, from our fellow beings and from ourselves by diminishing the spiritual life, the father confessor is very useful with his advice which must be always based on the wisdom of the Holy Scriptures and of the saints’ lives, not on one’s own selfish opinions, but on the faith and experience of the saints of the Church. This spiritual father is necessary for his advice, as well as for his prayers. Spirituality it is not so difficult as advice given to other people, but it is very difficult as permanent prayer for those whom we received to confess to us.”
To end with, His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel offered the clergymen a “molitfelnic” (book of prayers, religious services and canonical law) and a blessing cross.
